A Plague of Beggars in Merrie England
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A Plague of Beggars in Merrie England n the 11th century the royal revenue consisted of the sums brought into the exchequer by the J sheriffs in rents and profits from the forests and royal demesne lands, the feudal dues and incidents of tenure from other lands, the receipts from justice, and the tolls, and tribute from the towns. These provided the funds to support central government in peacetime. The King lived 'of his own'. Local government was carried on by lesser landholders at different levels, always supported by the services or produce of the land due to them - what we should today call 'rent' from their sub-tenants. The unit of land division was the tenement of a normal peasant, the holding which supported a ceorl and his household. A large house in the district formed a centre to which rents and taxes in kind or money were brought; hence 'the manor'. "Responsibility for payment ofthe King'sfeorm, for service in the j5'rd, and all other public burdens was distributed over the country in terms of these peasant tenements."73 Taxation was considered necessary only for special expenditure, as in war, or rebellion. Theimportanttaxwas Danegeld, a general land tax based on the hide of land. _ 95 STEALING OUR LAND This was a state of affairs where every free man provided by his labour and/or his wealth for the requirements ofa homogeneous, society. The requirements were simple: Defence, Justice, and Administration by officers of the Crown. Defence was provided by thegns and knights who held their land in return for military service, and by all other able-bodied freemen because their landholding obliged them to serve in the jjrd when called upon. In Norman times the call-out of the j5'rd was fast becoming obsolete, and knight service as a feudal due from military tenure was in the twelfth century being replaced by payment of scutage almost as if it were a tax. It was of course a commuted feudal due. In the thirteenth century the 'general levy' and the feudal levy existed simultaneously. Henry VII won the Battle of Stoke (1487) with a levy of Northerners - the royal host arrayed in three customary 'battles'. In the 16th century they became the 'trained bands', and in the 17th the 'militia'. But the customary period of two months' service in the year, and only within the realm, had long since compelled the kings to employ professional soldiers. For a time, which was remarkably short, these were paid for by scutage rendered in lieu of service by the knights. However, scutage had fallen into disuse long before its formal abolition in 1660. It had simply become useless in the changing circumstances of inflation, rising costs, and greater sophistication of warfare, and wars in far-off lands. Taxation and borrowing then became the expedients to which the king was driven in order to pay for the defence of the realm. The injustice of it lay in the now 'redundant' military tenants continuing to receive their rents while 96 A PLAGUE OF BEGGARS IN MERRIE ENGLAND passing little or nothing on to the Crown in place of their former service. The public rents of monastic lands too passed into private hands in Henry Viii's reign. It was the unwillingness of the feudal lords to relinquish any part of their land revenue after they had been released from their corresponding duties to the Crown which compelled the King to tax and to borrow. The barons were too strong for him, and the people had no say in the matter. Justice in the 11th century was provided centrally or on circuit by the king in person and locally in manor court, court leet, court baron, or court customary, by the lord from whom land in the locality was held. The sanctions were economic, and to hold ajurisdiction was a lucrative business. A mirror of the structure of central government was thus repeated at lower levels to provide local government and its financial support. Administration was supported, as indicated earlier, by money or service from landholders. Local taxes were few. But with the growth of professionals, both military and civil, who had to be paid salaries, the king was forced to rely on taxes (in origin 'aids'), and if parliament refused these, on borrowing. Because of his weakness in the face of the barons there was no other way that he could replace the revenue he formerly obtained through them from his people as tenants or sub-tenants of land. Over the next 900 years the first notable change was the transfer of power to the central government. Judges were sent out on circuit in the King's name, and they gradually took over civil and criminal litigation from the local courts. They were preferred for their greater efficiency and their greater impartiality. Armed forces were now 97 STEALING OUR LAND hired as mercenaries by the King, and in consequence the barons, quit of their feudal dues, and less bound to the king, became fractious. In the reigns of kings such as Stephen, John, Edward II, Richard II, and during nearly a century of rivalry between claimants to the throne after 1399 and in the Wars of the Roses of the 15th century, they raised local armies of their own and fought local wars. They were strong enough during this time to protect their lands from any updating of scutage. They forced John to grant Magna Carta, clause 16 of which (in one of the versions) precluded extraordinary scutage or aids being imposed unless by common consent of Council - in effect the barons themselves. 'Extraordinary' meant beyond what had always been charged, and completely ignored changing values and changing needs. It was this that enabled them to take advantage of Henry III's minority to prescribø on behalf of "all people of the realm" a fifteenth ofthe movables, of all the people as an aid to the King on a special occasion. They thus made the general populace responsible for the revenue they themselves should have been providing. From that time onwards the barons only bore the burden of feudal incidents (not dues) in return for their land. The burden was heavy, especially because the King abused their use, as far as he dared, to raise money. Henry VII was a master of the art. But they were no substitute for the lost feudal dues. The chief incidents of tenure were not abolished until the Statute of Tenures 1660, which also converted knight service into socage. The tax on movables, stabilised at fifteenths and tenths together with an 'aid' from the clergy, soon became a 98 - A PLAGUE OF BEGGARS IN MERE ENGLAND F fairly regular means oftaxing, which replaced the obsolete Danegeld. Fifteenths and tenths in their turn became obsolete, and were replaced by the Tudor 'aids' called subsidies, which taxed incomes. If the incomes were not fixed ascertainable sums, they were to be calculated from an assessment of either the subject's personal property or his land. Each of these three expedients to raise tax became obsolete because reassessment ceased to be carried out. In so far as they were based on discovering the value ofa man's personal property, which in the Tudor subsidies included plate, merchandise and household goods, assessment was soon discontinued. Opportunities to disguise or hide personal property were too many. The land being impossible to hide, its assessment continued for longer, and in some cases was the only part of the tax to survive. When based in part on ascertainable fixed incomes the unfairness of the subsidies was manifest. Since there was no accurate machinery for ascertaining fluctuating incomes, it was fixed incomes that substantially paid the tax. The so-called Land Tax of 1692 went the same way as the subsidies: "as had happened so often, difficulties of taxing personal incomes were again too great and the tax became little more than a tax on the rent from land" .71 It was forgotten that the Acts were aimed at income and contained the above-mentioned provisions to assess it. "The fact that the tax became popularly known as a land tax was a confession of failure by the state to make personal property and incomes, as opposed to realty, pay their share. 1171 But social and economic changes always make 99 STEALING OUR LAND continuing re-assessments essential. Villages decayed through plague or dearth or emigration. Population increased in some parts, and decreased in other parts. Yet Danegeld was still being levied in the thirteenth century on assessments which were ancient at the time ofthe Conquest. The tenths and fifteenths on movables, the Tudor subsidies which replaced them, the 'Aid' which came to be called 'Land Tax', all degenerated into stereotyped sums of money allocated between districts, which the local officials had to raise as best they could; and they did not, perhaps could not, do so without succumbing to pressure, financial inducement, and favouritism. The result was that the Crown was always short of money especially in wartime. The struggle which developed between King and Parliament, resulting ultimately in civil war in the 17th century, was largely fuelled by the pressing financial needs ofthe Crown and the unwillingness of Parliament to concede taxes. Parliaments were dominated by landowners who were willing only to grand aids or subsidies which fell upon all the people. Land was sacrosanct. That these policies drove large numbers into poverty because they had no land, had to be dealt with by Poor Relief. This gave a somewhat grudging assistance, which did not develop into a reasonable level of assistance until the 20th century.